Editor and Publisher Don Rogers: Perfect place for body, soul

Related Media

As often happens when I haul my body out for a run, I arrived back at my driveway, awed at this place.

I take this as evidence for a soul and a body v. just an especially complex single entity, incidentally, not to bore you overly much with metaphysics.

It just gets tiresome sometimes having to nudge the body along, and then it lacks the capacity to feel gratitude for life in a moment of, well, pretty much just pain as far as it is concerned.

Nevermind Sundays in the pew, life itself is a prayer. How we live, the decisions we make, what we do for fun and/or employment - all of it worship, spiritual journey. Verily.

But dear Lord, I'm weak, too. How else to explain that little band of belly fat, weakness for Guinness and most IPAs, ridiculous lingering addiction to Los Angeles Lakers fandom - though I'm thinking this season may just finally cure that deadly sin.

I usually run late in the day, near sundown. The long shadows and soft light no doubt play their part.

In the summer I go for the trails, the higher the better, beyond where the mountain bikes go, although I have my favorites in the Eagle Ranch maze, too. The pure beauty of the surroundings cuts through the pain, or at least makes me forget for glops of time.

In winter, it's pretty much my dirt road, forcing my appendage out into the cold to huff and puff and then give it a little break with the downhill back home, a promise of beer.

The body would just as soon be plunked in front of a television set to go along with that beer, thank you very much. It's for the soul that we push out into the cold and torture.

For body and spirit, I don't think there's a better place than right here. Of course, the ski mountains have had a little something to do with that.

We're the very principals of the Work Hard, Play Hard school of thought about living well. We're the deans at the college of Sound Body, Sound Mind.

Where visitors, second-home owners and locals come together through our penchant for the outdoors and making our bodies move.

As communities go, we're smarter than most.

I don't believe that's a coincidence with our tighter connection than most to our bodies, or at least the number of us who make the body serve penance in our exercise for the greater good of our souls.

The reward comes in the briefest moments of awe in the funniest places.

I mean, really, my driveway? Yet there I was, goofy smile, taking it in. Or maybe it was just nice to be done with the day's run, beer to come.